OneWeb

Greg Wyler founded the company as WorldVu in 2012, building on his earlier ambition to bring connectivity to underserved regions. Renamed OneWeb, it pursued a then-radical idea: instead of a handful of large geostationary satellites, deploy hundreds of small spacecraft in low Earth orbit to deliver low-latency broadband everywhere on the planet. In January 2015 OneWeb announced its plan with funding from Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Qualcomm, having acquired the satellite spectrum once held by SkyBridge. The first-generation design called for an initial constellation of roughly 648 satellites.

OneWeb attracted enormous capital, ultimately announcing about $3.4 billion raised from a marquee roster of backers. SoftBank became the largest investor, putting in roughly $2 billion and holding around a 37 percent equity stake; other supporters included Qualcomm, Airbus, Virgin, Intelsat, Hughes, Coca-Cola, and Mexico's Grupo Salinas. Airbus partnered on a high-volume satellite factory in Florida. OneWeb launched its first six satellites in February 2019 and ramped production, reaching 74 satellites in orbit by early 2020 as it raced to deploy a global network ahead of SpaceX's Starlink.